Culture

Teach The Children What?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

On National Children’s Day in Thailand, it is a tradition for the Prime Minister to deliver a positive “motto.” This year the wealthy PM Thaksin who owns Thai Air and other assets said that children should read more and think for themselves so they become smart successful adults. A secondary student, however, respectfully asked the PM whether children should value honesty and simplicity over succeeding by any means necessary. Oops.

The irony is that the PM evidently does not believe in advocating the same for the adults ministers under him. Amid flagging popularity in the cities and on-going feuding with the press, Thaksin recently took a dog and pony show to Roi Et in an impoverished province in the northeast. In his “reality show” he says he has done all the thinking and ministers just have to follow his instructions, eg, women should add sticky rice to their hand-woven baskets to add value…never mind that the coconut milk in sticky rice would sour on it’s way to Bangkok.

Most people here seem to think (for themselves) as, one columnist put it, “it’s just a stunt to fool the farmers” into thinking he is doing something for them. “When he comes to camp out in Roi Et just to give us some buffalos, land or knock-down houses it goes to show he doesn’t understand the root causes of poverty.”

Most people reportedly are not even listening to the show as it is on pay for view TV that most cannot afford.

Babies Take Manhattan

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Nanny’s pushing babies in strollers are everywhere in Brooklyn, we noticed soon after arriving here, so it was no surprise when the New York Times ran a story December 1 called “The Children Are Back” … “Babies Take Manhattan” a reference to a Leonard Cohen song.

After a decade of steady decline, the story goes, the number of children under 5 in Manhattan increased more than 26 percent from 2000 to 2004. The preschool population reached almost 97,000 in Manhattan alone last year, the most since the 1960’s. The growth seems to be at both ends of the economic spectrum…the growing number of immigrants…and professional families who apparently are wanting to avoid the daily commute into increasingly more expensive suburbs in the outer boroughs and New Jersey.

And…I would venture…the decision by younger educated career moms to balance out their lives closer to the workplace with one of the most important values in a person’s life….family. As for the increasing number of Mexican immigrants in the El Barrio of east side Manhattan…I am willing to bet there was never any question.

Odetta

Posted on by Laughingnomad

We had been years since we saw Odetta so when Bob read that she would be performing in a Village club we jumped at the chance to get tickets. She walked in dressed in a dramatic multi-colored red and purple silk and velvet gown and head dress…walked in very slowly and with help. She is still her inimitable self…but her weight is down to almost nothing and her songs were confined to softly sung spirituals. She is in her late 70’s and we worried about her health. The middle to late-aged folk-singing crowd laughed though when she cautioned everyone that in this day and age we should all be careful to use condoms!

New York Style

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Most everyone in New York is interested in looking stylish. The definition is different, however depending on the neighborhood you are in…whether on the affluent Upper West Side or on the Lower East Side. It also makes a difference what your ethnicity is. Young blacks and Hispanics are just as studied only in a different way. Generally, however, clothing ranges from dark to black.

You generally see denim and sneakers on the hip white thirty-somethings walking down 6th Street in Manhattan. The right accessories are de rigueur; it’s definitely a very studied look…it’s about the right jeans paired with the right sneakers and a white iPod in your pocket. For women, it’s levi jeans that can cost up to $500 (but heaven forbid not with a matching levi jacket) or long gathered skirts and an expensive handbag. And cell phones. “Blackberries are viewed as the professional choke-chains preferred by sadomasochistic bosses. And don’t expect to throw on high-waisted Levis and ratty high-tops and pass,” says Lonely Planet guidebook.

The cult of casual is subtle. “One of the draws of this city life is anonymity,” says Lonely Planet, “which is why New Yorkers prefer to mix their designer items back in with their regular clothes so that what they’re wearing doesn’t scream Prada or look like a glorified ad…” The American couple on our Big Onion Tour were wearing what they apparently thought was the New York Uniform…both were in black leather jackets and spendy slacks…both in expensive black leather walking shoes…and were immediately noticeable. They would have fit right in in Paris, however. I remember being remanded a few years ago in a restaurant in southern France while having a polite conversation with a lone woman at the next table who couldn’t figure out, she mused, why Americans wore those dirty sneakers on the streets in New York. You could be wearing a nice black pair of walking shoes she said, as I slowly tried to hide my all-terrain Adidas-covered feet under my table.

“What New Yorkers aren’t nonchalant about is their grooming,” LP goes on to say. “There is a slavish devotion to scubs, cuticles and perfectly coiffed just-rolled-out-of-bed hair. It takes hard work to make that impression of effortlessness.” Who this is referring to, of course, are hip young whites trying to look prosperous on waiter’s tips.

Maybe this is what we need to learn from the thirty-somethings that comprise the median age in New York…studied casualness… Us? Me? Bob?

Strangers in the “hood”

Posted on by Laughingnomad

I’ve never been in a city that has such diverse but tight little neighborhoods. The first question asked by anyone you meet, after what do you do, is where do you live. Soon you know the tenant up the stairs, the cashier on your corner deli and some of your neighbors at the yoga salon on your block..it’s like a little village…you belong…here.

One way to identify the subtleties of a neighborhood is to attend it’s summer street fair. The fair in our neighborhood, called Atlantic Antic, stretched all the way from the Brooklyn Art Museum to the East River…almost two miles. There were the usual food stalls (mostly Soul and Jamaican), beer stations and sidewalk clothing displays (many hand-made African motif). Every 20 feet or so a different music group blasted out African drumming, old-style singing like the Ink Spots of years ago-the vocalists sporting hot pink and lime green jackets, hip-hop, soul, jazz and rock.

There was table after table with information about the local arts activities, local pre-school and kindergarten opportunities, school events, parent organizations, nanny services, environmental concerns, local zoning issues, and all the rest of the latest local political advocacy efforts. Even the candidates for the upcoming New York City mayoral election dropped by. Children everywhere…on backs, on fronts, on shoulders, in strollers, those who could walk running amok. Hillary Clinton’s “It Takes A Village To Raise A Child” has taken on a whole new meaning for me!

Each neighborhood has it’s subtleties. Many of the stalls offered African clothing and jewelry that were hand-made by their sellers. I was trying on a pair of earrings and sharing a mirror with a middle-aged lady in one small stall and suddenly she turns and says to me…”this is so much fun! I just love this fair! Love it! We never have anything fun like this in our neighborhood.” “Where do you live?” I ask. “Queeeeeens,” she grumbled! We both laughed, although I didn’t quite know why I was laughing…I guess just because she was laughing. We haven’t spent much time in Queens yet.

Bob was finished with the fair, however, as soon as he was confronted head-on by a large group of police with a few others circling around behind him. Apparently we had been followed. Bob had been video taping the fair as he walked along…panning the people and stalls of goods along each side of the street. One of the young policemen approached Bob and asked what he was doing here. “What is the problem?” Bob asked, oblivious to any criminal activity. “Why are you taking pictures of this?” as he pointed toward the sidewalk and the buildings. Bob was becoming progressiely nonplussed. The cop said, “that building.” Bob said “what, where?”

We hadn’t even realized we were in front of the Post Office! Bob then explained that he was just panning and video taping the street fair. “You can’t take pictures of public buildings,” the cop said. “Oh, then we aren’t supposed to take pictures of the Empire State Building or Ellis Island or the white house,” Bob thought. Bob, by this time was wondering “why me?” and he was finished with the fair. The last similar confrontation for Bob was in Dar es Salaam Tanzania. But that time the phony cop was after Bob’s wallet. The offense was photographing public buildings (also a post office in Dar).

We are still asking ourselves what it is that is causing people to regard us with suspicion here. I certainly don’t think we fit the typical terrorist profile–but then we are not your typical “local” either. Or maybe there is just some reverse karma regarding postal institutions.

The New York Attitude

Posted on by Laughingnomad

The New York attitude is a lot more complicated than simple rudeness. According to a local, it’s a mixture of being tough, brave, on your toes, jaded, overworked and intensely focused. Who needs to be pulled into a conversation or potential conflict with a crazy person. Why would I want to be waylaid with small talk when this 15-minute commute is the only time I have to myself all day?

But beneath all those jaded exteriors where no one is making eye contact, beneath all those masks, there is a sense that those who live in New York are all in this together…whether waiting for the next train rerouting, watching the homeless man tap-dancing through the subway car or waiting for the next 9/11.

One evening I sat next to a twenty-something on the subway who was reading a Chiang Mai Thailand guidebook. When I asked if she was traveling there (so much for not talking to subway riders) she flashed a quick smile and asked if we had been there. We just got back from Thailand a month ago, we said. Then she wanted to know which neighborhood we lived in in Brooklyn (usually the first question you get). She wanted to know if we had any suggestions for a guesthouse with it’s own bathroom. Bob referred her to a place he had stayed that also offered reasonable mountain hiking tours among the indigenous villages…just what she wanted. Have a great time, we said as she got off in her Brooklyn Heights neighborhood.

I think the tough outer shell that many New Yorkers adopt is out of necessity. How else to keep your sanity intact in a city that’s rife with all sorts of people. Busy, overworked, highly focused and goal-oriented locals must balance a skittish energy with surviving in a city where it is difficult to succeed…where just the apartment rent will often suck as much as three fourths of their income.

Service workers are efficient and task oriented and come off to us friendly Left Coasters as downright cold. On the other hand, when I want to be outside our apartment sometimes I will sit on the stoop and read the paper. To my surprise, about 30% of the people walking by will look up and say good morning or good afternoon. But then I am in their neighborhood. On a certain level I have some sort of an identity.

People in big cities in other countries of the world do not seem as cold, distant and rude, Bob and I say to each other…but then I think that even though we often wish service workers in other countries would be given training in customer service, there is not the added pressure coming from the efficiency ethic in those cities…and as a whole the people are ethnically homogenous so that social interactions are already predictable, easy and nonthreatening.

But this is my take and not Bob’s. Bob thinks that it is a learned, conditioned behavior and has a cascading effect. If people are nasty to you several times each day then it puts you in a nasty mood (fragile, friable and ultimately bitchy) and it snowballs from there…like coming home and kicking the dog when someone at work yells at you. Anyone with any other ideas?

Third Culture Kids

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Third Culture Kids are children of expatriate families who live for a significant proportion of their lives in a culture other than their own, where they travel to many countries other than their own passport country. This results in the adaptation and incorporation of certain characteristics from a variety of cultures into their own personalities.

These kids were first studied in significant numbers by sociologists in the 1960’s and the initial subjects were drawn from American children of missionary, diplomatic or military families. Other terms that have been used are Global Nomads, army brats, transnationals, transculturals, and internationally mobile children.

Researchers discovered that overwhelmingly and across the globe TCKs merge their birth culture with the culture of the host countries they’ve lived in to create a third, very distinct culture of their own. What was surprising was that there were also a distinct set of personality traits exhibited that were not dependant on the countries in which they grew up or their family background. In other words, an Australian missionary kid who grew up in the Philippines, Zambia and Brazil, would share a distinct set of personality trais in common with a Swiss diplomat’s child who had lived in Japan, America, Fiji and Spain. These trais were defined as being ‘third culture” thus giving birth to the term “Third Culture Kids.”

The major problem that TCKs face as they grow up is to define where they truly belong. They are products of the sum of their experiences, rather than a product of the native soil of their passport country. Their multicultural upbringing encourages a stronger worldview and well-developed cross-cultural skills. These kids are able to get along with people of many different races. Having a less clearly defined sense of belonging to one definite “us” means they are less comfortable with dealing with a foreign “them.” They are able to view events from a wider perspective, more used to adapting to the view points of the people and cultures where they have lived as well as to the views of the people of their passport country. Some TCKs, however, experience rootlessness and a constant, unresolved grief due to the loss of contact or breaking off of relationships. Life becomes even more difficult for them when they go back to live in their own country where defining social signifiers like fashion trends and music have changed.

Even those of us in the West who travel to many different countries over a long period of time as adults, however, often find ourselves developing a “Third Culture” personality, more elegantly described by Pico Iyer in his book “The Global Soul.”

For more information you can visit www.tckworld.com.

Thainess And The West

Posted on by Laughingnomad

The July 2005 edition of the slick upscale magazine for English-speaking foreigners called The Big Chilli ran an article with interviews of prominent Bangkok residents to get their views of what constitutes Thai culture. Two were Thai and two were western expats living permanently in Bangkok. This is what they had to say.

Jai
Korn Chatkavanij, a member of the Thai Parliament, believes that the Thai language and way of life has more to do with the soul than the surface. There is no English equivalent to the Thai word “jai” he says, but the closest you can come is “heart.” William J. Kausner, Professor at the Institute of Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University adds that the core element of the traditional Thai persona is the “cool heart” where “one is enjoined to preserve a sense of emotional equilibrium, treading the Buddhist ideal of the Middle Path, avoiding both extremes and overt expressions of socially disruptive emotions such as anger, displeasure, annoyance, and hatred. Confrontation is to be avoided at all costs as any open and direct conflict makes Thais psychologically uncomfortable, says Professor Kausner.

Mr. Chatikavanji says that this lack of confrontation makes Thai culture more tolerant…willing “to roll with the punches.” This, then, makes Thais traditionally adept at indirect expressions of antisocial emotions through gossip, anonymous letter, pamphlets, etc. says Professor Klausner.

On the other hand, Ms. Khunying Chamnongsri, an author, poet, social worker and Chairperson of the Rutnin Eye Hospital says that tolerance comes naturally from the inside. “It doesn’t count if it is done consciously. This can be seen through the Thai ‘wai’ (bowing to another in greeting with hands together as if in prayer,) not touching people’s heads or pointing with your feet.

Relationships and Inclusion
“Foreigners are often surprised when Thais ask them their age, because their ego feels that their privacy has been invaded. But Thais ask this question, Ms. Chamnongsri says, out of a sense of friendliness and inclusion, extending sister and brotherhood. In the old days, and often even now, a friend will immediately ask if you have had something to eat and if not you will be offered food…even if it is only a glass of water. In rural areas you see jugs of water in front of homes with long stemmed ladles so that people can help themselves to a drink. “This all shows a sense of inclusion, concern and welcome. We don’t have a strong sense of self-centeredness or egocentricity since throughout our history people have lived together very much as communities creating a notion of extended family,” says the professor.

Philip Cornwell-Smith, author, says that Thainess is all about relationships which will trump the economics or rules of the situation every time. It comes from a different logic based on a sense of loyalty and kinship rather than on abstract principles, leaving people from other cultures startled by Thai choices and behaviors.

Way Of Life
Thais are not an ideological people, says Mr. Chatkkavanji…adding that most of the world’s problems have been caused by ideology. “We talk more about a way of life and have a general feel of what we need to do to get along. Since we don’t confront we try to find ways to compromise. This is a key word in Thai society and it infuriates ideological youth.” Equilibrium, anti-confrontation and emotional detachment are seen by Thais as positive aspects of Thai society.

Sanuk (Fun and Play)
Play, says Philip Cornwell-Smith is a fundamental Thai value that continues all the way through life and is not viewed as being a childish thing. Len (play), and deun len (walk play) means going around just wandering and looking at things. My son’s wife is always saying “lets go look around.”

Status Consciousness
Professor Klausner goes on to say that Thais accept their hierarchical order of society whether a person is on the lower or upper rungs of the socio-political ladder. It is interpreted as a justification for continued unaccountable control by those in power and acceptance by the disadvantaged of their exploitation.

Respect For Others
An innate respect for others is a part of Thainess, says Khunying Chamnongsri. “You can see it in gestures, smiles and what you do for others and that this contributes to Thai success in the service industry. “Krengjai” is the moral imperative to be considerate towards and avoid bothering or offending others, as well as the traditional value of “katanyu” or gratefulness towards one’s parents, teachers, and others who have protected or supported you. The Four Sublime States of Consciousness: compassion, loving kindness, sympathetic joy and equilibrium are central to Thai culture so they value not hurting or impinging on the well-being of others,

Contact With The West
At present, Professor Klausner says, there is a burgeoning civil society which wants to change the rules of the game by substituting equality and individual civil and political rights, for status; and popular participation, the rule of law and good governance, for unaccountable power.

Ms Chamnongsri laments that Thai values are not as present as they used to be. “Times change,” she says, “and there are both positive and negative influences that come with the dynamics of cultural interchange that contribute to today’s fast paced life, the breaking-up of extended families and the new values of materialism.” “Copying the ways of the West, believes Korn Chatikavanji, “will inherently destroy the Thai way of life. Politicians don’t think about happiness as much as they do about development and economic growth. Do people really want to create an ‘American way of life’ here in Thailand,” he asks? “90% of Thais would say no, so we really need to define Thainess. As Anand Panyarahchun said 15 years ago, ‘There is no Thai or Farang way. There is only the right or wrong way.'” Professor Klausner believes that Thai traditional attributes will assure that a more individualistic and egalitarian society that emerges is still one where respect, graciousness, gentility and civility prevails.

Exposure to Thai culture is a gift to those of us from the West who visit Thailand.

It is July 2005 and the end of this travel segment…I will fly back to Los Angeles from Bangkok on China Air and then on to Oregon for a month where we will repack and fly to New York on JetBlue at the end of August to sublet an apartment in Brooklyn until January 2006.

What Is A Farang?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Or what does “farang” mean to the Thai people. It has been said that the word derives from the French. It is also the Thai word for guava so you hear farang-eating jokes. To make it work “kee nok” means bird shit but alo is a type of guava. So you can see where this going.

Bob and I both feel that the author’s analysis is rather over-simplified and defies the existence of the many upstanding western teachers and business people you will see on the sky train at rush hour but you do not see at Patpong night clubs. And we question the views of a westerner trying to explain how Thais see them. But the author does raise some interesting points to think about especially if you are living here:

What Is A Farang?
By Kenneth Champeon
http://www.thingsasian.com/goto_article/article.3281.html
“Sometimes you can learn most about a people by studying how it views other peoples. In Thailand, the most common and prominent visitors from outer space are the farangs, a versatile term that may apply to foreigners, Westerners, “white” people; like any term deriving from a loose racial category — Negro, Oriental — it has its uses, but ultimately defies precise definition. The average Thai’s conception of farangs is roughly as follows. First of all, farangs are extraordinarily large; this and their pale skin and variably-colored eyes and hair contribute to their otherworldliness — and, to many Thais, their resemblance to ghosts. Farangs are also rich. While it may be true that the income of an average person of European ancestry far surpasses that of the average Thai, many farangs in Thailand are there precisely because they have little money. But good luck trying to tell a Thai this. Gouging foreigners wouldn’t be nearly so much fun if it were known that often they too have to struggle to make ends meet.

On a related note, Thais are also generally of the opinion that farangs are stingy. This because a farang’s property is his own and no one else’s, whereas a Thai is more accustomed to viewing his property as shared amongst family and friends. Farangs are also individualistic, meaning that they do things like travel alone, scale mountains alone, and engage in antisocial behavior such as the reading of books. On a recent visit to America from Thailand, one of the things I first noticed was how few groups I saw: everyone seemed to be on his own, atoms crossing each others’ paths but never meeting. While the Thais have a grudging respect for the farang’s capacity to go it alone — calling him geng, or “skillful” whenever he does something of which an individual Thai deems himself incapable — for the most part I suspect that they find individualism to be unsettling, as it goes against the Thai respect for family, social cohesion and obeisance to authority.

But the main point I would like to make here is that farangs — Westerners as experienced by Thais, in Thailand — are a world apart from Westerners everywhere else. Many if not most farangs in Thailand are oddballs, rejects, runaways: hippies, druggies, alcoholics, sex maniacs, beach bums. Asked to describe a farang, a Thai is likely to imagine one of two creatures: the odiferous, long-haired backpacker, or the pot-bellied, beet-red barfly. And he may be surprised to learn that he has more in common with the average Westerner — a regular job, a stable family life — than the average Westerner has in common with farangs.

This because farangs in Thailand live according to a morality all their own, neither Western nor Thai, though drawing in some part from both. So, for example, a Westerner newly arrived to Thailand may be opposed to prostitution on principle, but the longer he stays the more he will come to condone it and he may even come to participate in it. He has gone some way toward becoming a Thai male, roughly three-fourths of whom have visited prostitutes, but he has not gone all the way. (He may draw the line at prostitutes he believes to have been coerced, for instance.) A farang is in the unique and often uncomfortable position of being judged according to three very different standards of conduct: that of Thais, that of Westerners, and that of farangs, and a certain amount of maneuvering if not outright deception will be required to satisfy all three. On the other hand, farang morality can be profoundly liberating — as, in some sense, it is no morality all, but instead boils down to whatever you can afford so long as it keeps you out of jail. (And what’s more, staying out of jail may boil down to what you can afford — in terms of bribes.)

Indeed one of the reasons that farang morality can be so amorphous is that the Thais are exceedingly tolerant, so that behavior that might not fly elsewhere in the world receives, in Thailand, a good-natured shrug or merely a bewildered stare. Farangs are barbarians anyway — why chide them for acting like barbarians? And in some cases the Thais are simply in awe of the liberties farangs are prepared to take. Unfortunately this only reinforces the common notion that all Westerners sunbathe in the nude, drink like fish and treat Thai baht as if it were Monopoly money.

And tolerance, of course, has its limits: very often the word farang is used in a derogatory or resentful manner, when a Westerner has overstepped the bounds of admissible conduct or has done something that brings shame to Thailand or its people. Indeed one occasionally hears the word spoken in the same tone that an English-speaking homophobe might use for the word “faggot”, where both classes of people are seen as a kind of contagion affecting some mythically pristine social body. In many cases, of course, such scorn is justified, as Thailand’s reputation would be much improved if its less savory farangs — the drug traffickers, the pedophiles, the football hooligans — were to get lost. But it also reveals the extent to which Thailand is a racist society — and, paradoxically, one in which whiteness among Thais is prized while whites themselves are often ridiculed.

One indicator that farangs constitute a unique subculture is the existence of a magazine dedicated to them: Farang, which carries the regrettably narcissistic subtitle “You! You! You!” Although I have once appeared in its pages, much of Farang’s content is uninteresting to me, me, me and my friends, friends, friends — extreme sports, “hard” sex and similar amusements for the chronically bored. But all too often such things are what draw farangs to Thailand and keep them there. For many farangs Thailand is less a country than it is a playground, a place where childhoods can be relived or lived for the first time. And if the Thais can profit from providing the conditions for this to occur, then they are usually more than happy to oblige, especially as the Thais are generally more insouciant than are their Western visitors, many of whom seem never to have learned how to smile.

And it is partly for this reason that many Thais view the mighty farang not with awe but with an emotion by which farangs might be surprised: pity. Where are your mother and father? How often do you see them? How many siblings do you have? Questions like this are as urgent to a Thai as they may seem irrelevant or impertinent to a farang, but they are nothing more than variations on the question: Why on earth are you in Thailand, alone? Don’t you — this is another fairly common question — get lonely? A farang may deny this up and down, but the truth is that loneliness is precisely what he has come to Thailand in order to cure. What, I asked a farang friend of mine headed back to the US, do you fear most about returning? “Alienation,” he replied, without skipping a beat. And farangs are not just fleeing loneliness; many indeed are fleeing the very (and very dysfunctional) families about which the Thais are so inquisitive. “Westerner,” a Thai once told me — and she was referring in particular to Americans and their convoluted family trees — “is fucked up.” So there you have it.

Sadly, the fucked-upness of farangdom is not something to which the Thais are entirely immune, and indeed they sometimes display an uncanny ability to adopt or at least imitate the worst, because most conspicuous and alien aspects of Western behavior. But because the Thais are more grounded than their farang counterparts, whose ideas of what is right and wrong have been so assaulted by rapid social change that they are all but nonexistent, the reverse is more often than not the case, with farangs coming to embrace values in Thai society that they see dying in their own. This in part explains why so many farang men are attracted to Thai women, who represent for the men an ideal of womanhood — which may be as simple as finding contentment in the mere raising of children — that in their cultures may no longer exist. So in many cases a farang is a social reactionary, at least from the perspective of the society from which he originates. But to a Thai he may seem progressive.

Throughout most of this essay I have spoken of farangs as if they were all male, and that is because most of them are, and because I am, but there are plenty of female farangs too. And they are, almost without exception, regarded as beautiful by Thais, men and women alike. Thai women in particular see strength as well as beauty, but the more observant of them will sooner or later realize that this strength is sometimes a disguise meant to conceal deep uncertainties. Thai women tend to give an appearance of malleability that hides a solid core; with farang women the reverse is often true. Commonly the result is that farang women urge Thai women to stand up for themselves only to bemoan their own loneliness and insecurity, and the counselor ends up being the counseled. At once strong and sick: this more generally may be said to represent the farangs through Thai eyes.

Then again I suspect that for most Thais — that is, the Thais in the countryside — the farang is largely a comic figure, someone to wave at or make fun of, as he drives a motorcycle that is too small for him or fumbles his way through a language too musical for him. “Fa-lang, fa-lang!” — this accompanied by pointing fingers and toothy smiles (or laughter discreetly covered by a small hand) is very often the most recognition that a farang will receive on any given day. And it’s quite enough, really.”

Posted by laughingnomad on July 14, 2005 10:44 PM

A Harley in Viet Nam

Posted on by Laughingnomad

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June 10, 2004
While I was in Bangkok Bob flew to Vietnam. He wrote to say he had difficulties accessing the web today and spent most of the day traveling.

His emails:
Now in Da lat in the mountains about 300-400 km north of Saigon. It is at a 5000 foot elevation so cool–in fact feels cold. Probably about 55 degrees right now–everybody in a jacket. Feels like central Oregon and after the heat/humidity combo in Hanoi it is quite refreshing. I am at an internet cafe surrounded by adolescents screaming at success/failure with video games. Tiz too much–later.
B

June 11
good morning:
have been roaming around Dalat—much embroidery art done here–quite nice but also can have a hefty price–saw several landscapes that I liked–might pick up a small piece–just to have a representative sample. Bought several pieces in Hanoi–I really like their style of art.

Approached by a fellow this morning–call themselves “Easy Riders”–have big bikes and arrange trips off the beaten track–tempted to have him take me to Saigon via the Cambodian border and the Ho Chi Minh trail–he can also extend things to the delta (and probably to So. America for that matter)–he is 45-50 in age and has been doing this awhile. Am tempted as it would take me to areas I would not otherwise see and I am tired of the usual tourist routes. It would mean 300-400 km on the road and the limiting factor would be the ability of my butt to withstand several days in the saddle..

June 12
Another nice day in Dalat. It is a major tourist destination for Vietnamese—with it being a weekend the place is packed—had to inquire at three hotels before finding a vacancy…in evenings they close off the downtown streets to vehicles and streets/plazas are packed with people just walking and people watching. Not much to buy re handicrafts etc. but wonderful produce — however do not see it offered in restaurants. Am tired of Vietnamese cuisine and am overdosed on French bread.

NOTE: Next few days Bob spent in bed with some kind of virus….Bob worried about influenza-like syndrome and me thinking it was probably Dengue Fever as this is the season for it.

Sat June 18
hello–
Was going to leave Dalat today by bus for Saigon. This a.m. had second thoughts and decided would be much more fun and interesting and educational to do the bike thing. Tried to find my rider (named Budda–because his stomach and somatotype is identical to the icon) but could not arouse him by phone–he probably ditched me for other customers so went down to the local easy rider hangout cafe and there were at least a half dozen of the “boys” there. They start out by being very cool but then the pitch begins . I had experienced it twice before so he (Thui) was surprised when I cut to the chase, “How much for 3 days?”. So to see whether I would be able to tolerate we agreed on a sampler package of a day trip around Dalat. It worked out well–he is safe… informed, understandable (re accent), non-invasive and 48 yr/o–but looks 55 to 60.

Weather turned inclimant and last hour on the bike was wet. Purchased a plastic pancho but was totally saturated at the end of the trip. Was informed that my previous illness was do to too sudden climate changes, that there was no possibility that it could be bird flu because that entity does not exist in Vietnam! I was instructed that on return to hotel that I must wash my hair to get all the rainwater out so that I do not come down with any other ailment(s).

Tomorrow leave for 3 day trip to the coast just East of Saigon–he does not want to get closer because of increasing traffic and I appreciate his concerns. I will travel remainder of distance to Saigon by bus. So depart 8 a.m. tomorrow–I look like a Harley biker going down the freeway. Not sure how we’re going to get all my luggage on the bike but he says, “no problem’. Will not see internet again until Saigon.

NOTE: my daughter-in-law, Luk, a Thai, has also warned me to wash my hair after a rain. She said when it first rains there are bad chemicals in the rain that can hurt you. She could be referring to Acid Rain?
Eunice